{"id":25264,"date":"2025-10-09T10:47:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T14:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/?post_type=story&p=25264"},"modified":"2025-10-14T10:57:51","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T14:57:51","slug":"constitution-day-lecture-explores-strengths-flaws-in-government","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/2025\/10\/09\/constitution-day-lecture-explores-strengths-flaws-in-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Constitution Day Lecture explores strengths, flaws in government"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

The strengths and weaknesses of our system of government were brought under close examination at the annual Constitution Day lecture, delivered by Aziz Rana, professor of law at Boston College Law School.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During his Sept. 18 address to an audience of students and faculty in the Grace Conference Room, Rana traced how America\u2019s constitutional system, designed to offset majority rule with checks and balances, gradually fused with other ideological responsibilities, including market capitalism, civil libertarianism, and maintaining belief in the American global authority. This fusion, Rana argued, produced a powerful but fragile political compact that defined the mid-20th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe U.S. Constitution is perhaps the hardest in the world to formally amend. You need to have two-thirds in both houses and then three-fourths of the states to ratify an amendment. What that has meant in the U.S. is that most change takes place not actually through writing a new document,” he said. “What you can do is pass what some legal scholars call ‘landmark’ pieces of legislation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rana unraveled constitutional questions in his first book, \u201cThe Two Faces of American Freedom\u201d(Harvard University Press, 2010), which contextualizes modern America in the history of colonialism. His latest book, \u201cThe Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them\u201d (University of Chicago Press, 2024), explores the modern emergence of \u201cconstitutional veneration,\u201d especially against the backdrop of growing American global authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n